How To Use Pinterest?

Is Pinterest - social media’s rising star, can help businesses? If it is true then, “Have you pin your business or not?”. There are several articles and blogs from experts written on the subject. As a social media user and online marketing expert I am more concerned about Pinterest than most of the users.

Let’s discuss the central issue: How Pinterest is helpful for your business and how to use Pinterest for marketing and promoting your brand?

Image Source - Shutterstock.com

Having started its operations in March 2010, Pinterest as of today is the third most popular social network in terms of traffic. Pinterest is a gigantic image store that allows you to collect and organize videos or images that you love or that inspires you. So we can say:

Pin- It’s a kind of bookmark.

Board- A place where your pins reside.

1. Why businesses should adopt it for marketing their brands?

Accounting to Moz study, Pinterest drives more traffic than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined. The top 5 reasons for why businesses should adopt it for marketing are as follows:

To advertise and market their product and services online.
To connect with their Existing customers.
To give special offers and discounts to their customers.
To get customer feedback about their services.
To find out new customers having interest in their product or service.

2. How to use it -

A) Set up your business account with attractive profile, first -

1. You should set up the business account by filling the relevant information about their business. Also, you have another option. You can convert your personal account to business account. See Figure:

2. You must verify your website which helps you to show as a trustworthy source of business for customers.

3. Set up your profile with the relevant and short description with an eye catching image.

Include your domain in the profile.
Link your account to your genuine face book and twitter business accounts.

B) Create Boards and start Pinning -

After setting up your business account this is the time to create and organize boards. A board is more specifically a folder where your bookmarks or pins reside.

Image Source - Shutterstock.com

You should keep in mind -

Create boards related to your brand. You can also make a board as a Place board by using Add Map feature.
Create a Guest Pinner board which should allow others to pin to it.
Each board must have a specific description that inspires customers to follow your board.
Make the Boards having the name - About us, Services we Provide, Contact us. These would show you as a trustworthy and a genuine source of business. Ensure that Contact us board should be a place board so that it will more easily for customers to find you and your business place.
Create other boards as well which shows what inspires you like- ideas, fashions, animals, Tips and Ticks, nature and many more.
Each board must have at least 10 pins which can be either an image or a video. And ensure that these pins should be relevant to your board and brand.
Select attractive and descriptive board cover image.

C) Getting Audience or customers for business -

After setting your profile and creating board, question arises “How can I find customer for my business?” Pinterest allows you to do the following actions –

Follow- Follow others and their boards.
Repins - Pin others stuff as well.
Like - Like other’s Pin or stuff.
Comment - Comment on other’s Pins which shows your active presence on the internet.

In spite of these, you can make sure -

Promote your deals and offers with the pin.
Consider Quality over Quantity as well.
Tag others in your pin by using #.
Invite others to pin in your guest pinning boards as well.

3. Enable your Business website for Pinterest -

Now this is the time to optimize your business website for the Pinterest-

Have a Pin It Button on every page of your website or blog to make it sharable on Pinterest.
Make sure the blog or each page of website must have at least one visual i.e. image or video.
Use Pinterest Analytics to know - Which pins are most popular? and Which pins generate more traffic to your site? Such information would help you to make decision about your pinning strategy and business decisions.
Download Bookmarklet for your web browsers. These Bookmarklet allows you to pin instantly as you come across the web. Download here for Google Chrome or Firefox Browser .

Image from blog.pinterest.com
You can find out what of your has been pinned- http://pinterest.com/source/domainname